


Prince Charming

by grayimperia



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Character Study, Deconstruction, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 08:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12295290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayimperia/pseuds/grayimperia
Summary: [V3 Spoilers]Maki thinks nothing of it. Momota’s an idiot, and his own blind belief will take him down one day, anyway.People never change.-Maki falls in love and apart.





	Prince Charming

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up through chapter 5

In the orphanage, Maki remembers holding a worn book of western fairy tales as children scrambled in and out of her lap—her voice still steady, laboring over each word just above the general din around her. Each page was thin and decorated with faded drawings of royalty and monsters, men and magic, and so many orphans and young girls in rags, just waiting for fate to come meet them.

A tiny girl holding onto one of Maki’s pigtails in one hand pointed to a picture of a princess to be, held hostage by a dragon. She said, “She looks just like you!” 

Maki ignored her and kept reading. The story ended with a prince and a marriage—love and romance and everything beautiful.

The next day, some men came to the orphanage to play with the children. Maki’s fate had come to meet her and take her by the hand.

-

Maki thinks that Saihara Shuichi is the most pathetic person she has ever met.

He comes to the dining hall in some weird fit of trying to be a new person, spurred on by the memories of a girl who spoke in nothing but platitudes and went to her death still manipulating him. Maki quirks an eyebrow whenever he talks about the truth or moving forward and realizes that even from beyond the grave, Kaede’s grip over him is as strong as ever. 

Momota’s an idiot who’s taken in by it and trips over himself to prop him up whenever he seems close to falling down again. Maki supposes one hero wasn’t quite enough to really save Saihara as he clings to his new champion. 

She just rolls her eyes. They’re both stupid. Everyone around her is stupid. 

Maki almost regrets not taking the First Blood Perk. She had been alone with Angie and Yumeno, and could easily have snapped either’s neck with less effort that she puts into buttering her toast in the morning. But both girls are still alive, chattering about some inane, nebulous concept that will come save them if they just believe hard enough.

Then the school opens up, and Maki stops dead in her tracks in a room lined with weapons. 

Everyone’s stupid. But everyone still has the power to vote her into whatever mass execution Monokuma has at the ready the second a body shows up and her true nature is revealed. There were few problems Maki encountered in her line of work that couldn’t be solved by stabbing the right person in the right place. The knives and guns and crossbows hanging from the walls mock her as she realizes this, however, is one of them. 

She still threatens to kill Saihara the second he approaches the door, and he runs away because he’s still a coward, and that’s just the way things are. Maki sits in front of the door long after the others leave, tugging on her pigtails as the past haunts her, thinking how people never, ever change. 

-

If it wasn’t for the fact that Momota was already flanked by Tenko and Gonta, Maki likely would have bashed his head in the second he said, “Hey—Harukawa, you look like you can fight.”

The hair on the back of her neck stands on end, and she says, “What is that supposed to mean?”

He grins, missing the malice behind her words, and the fact that Maki can’t tell if it’s intentional or not just angers her more. “It means you should come to our strategy meeting. I’m gathering people to meet in the basement so we can plan out our attack against Monokuma when the time limit ends.”

“You are very welcome to join, Harukawa-san,” says Tenko. “Momota-san has also suggested Yumeno-san and Angie-san as possible candidates.”

Maki furrows her brow at the names of possibly two of the weakest looking members of their group. “And they’re going to do what against an army of robots?”

Momota shrugs. “Thinking Yumeno could use magic and Angie her God or something.” 

Gonta nods. “With their powers and Gonta’s strength, Gonta believes we can save everyone!”

Maki looks over the three of them all bursting with false hope. Momota says, “You should come, too—better than sitting around doing nothing at least, right? Times like these,” he slams his fists together. “We gotta take matters into our own hands. Only person who’s gonna save us is us.”

And she doesn’t know why, but she goes. Maybe because Momota told her to, and doing what she’s told is what Maki does best. But as she sits in a room with Angie and Yumeno babbling to each other and music that sounds like hell blaring over Momota’s failed plan, she wonders why she believed any thing he had said for a second.

Then Amami dies, and when Maki’s accused, she accuses Momota in turn. 

And she thinks nothing of it. He’s an idiot, and his own blind belief will take him down one day, anyway.

-

Ouma Kokichi is nothing more than an arrogant brat with a big head and a bigger mouth, and he thinks he can back her into a corner with a few clever words after Hoshi’s demise.

Maki’s hands clench into fists, and she wants nothing more to wring his neck—a fitting end for a rat like him. But the vote weighs over her, imprisoning her in her podium as he announces she needs to fight against Momota for the right to not die here and now. And Maki has no idea if Momota’s Hoshi’s killer. He could be—for all she knows, he could be another Kaede, ready to be hauled off to his execution over his own ideals. 

And she’ll end him to save herself when Momota says he refuses. 

He believes in her. He’s an idiot. He lies for her. _Why the hell does he believe in her?_

Tenko had made a stand for Yumeno earlier—though anyone could have seen her devotion trampling over logic from a mile away. But Momota throws away everything to protect her, and Maki can’t remember a conversation they had where she hadn’t called him an idiot. 

And she thinks again, _why is he doing this?_

He saves her from her own distrust, and Maki has no idea why any of this is happening. 

He chose her. _Why did he choose her?_

She is cold, but she burns like a raging fire. Underneath her surface, Maki’s anger bubbles and boils and spills out of her fast enough that her hands are finally around Ouma’s scrawny little neck before any thing other than rage could flitter through her mind. 

He dares her to kill him in front of everyone, and part of Maki isn’t sure whether to laugh or spit in his face. He thinks she won’t do it, and Maki tightens her grip. 

Ouma’s face starts to change color, and the choking noises he makes become more and more pitiful—Maki squeezes harder. The others shout, not to save him but to save her. 

So she drops him, and Ouma falls to the ground in a heap, coughing and gasping and victorious. 

She paces her room. So she’s been found out. So the others will hate her now. So the next time there’s a murder, they’ll cast their votes for her because she’s a cold blooded killer. Maki clenches and unclenches her fists. The only thing that matters is the vote, and she’ll throw down anyone she can to save herself. That’s just the way she is, and Maki knows that people never change. 

-

Momota rings her doorbell a hundred times because even with her true nature staring him dead in the face, he chooses to believe. 

Maki has no idea what there is for him to believe in. 

She goes with him because it’s easier to give in to his attempts to reach out. But before, it had always been easier to push away than to let in. He rings her doorbell again—the sound like a hundred wasps swarming around her head, driving into her brain, and making her make poor decisions. That’s why she goes with him. 

She feels a slight spike of something resembling disappointment when she sees Momota invited Saihara, too. But Maki clears her head. It’d be stupid to be jealous over someone like Saihara. It’d be stupid to be jealous. 

There’s nothing. It’s nothing. Maki almost killed someone in front of them, and they want to be her friend. Momota says she’d never do something like that because he believes in her, and he knows she’d never choose to do something like that. 

“It’s not about if I have a choice,” Maki says, gripping at the grass around her feet. “Choice wasn’t even a concept when I was training.”

“Well,” Momota shrugs. “It is now.” He smiles too big and too wide, and Maki turns away because it makes him look stupid. “And I think you’re gonna choose to be a really great person, Harumaki.”

Saihara chimes in that he does as well, but his words mean little over the sound of Momota trying to save her from herself. 

But then Momota says he thinks Saihara will be a great person, too, and he believes in both of them. He looks at Saihara the exact same way he looks at her. 

Maki’s face burns, and she decides that everything is stupid. 

-

Kissing Momota won’t make her a better person. Wanting to be better because she wants him only means she’s selfish. 

But Maki doesn’t care.

Momota talks a lot about space and his childhood and how well Saihara’s doing, and Maki finds it difficult to care about any of it. But she still loves him. She loves him because he lets her, and Maki hadn’t realized just how starved for anything close to love until he told her how much he believed in her.

She isn’t dependent, and she isn’t possessive, and she’s isn’t incredibly bored when he goes on a rambling story about his blatantly fake adventures. 

It’d be stupid to think otherwise. 

-

Maki learns the hard way that the way Momota talks to her is the way he talks to everyone, and she doesn’t know why that’s a hard thing to learn.

At training, it’s Shuichi and Harumaki, in the group, it’s his two assistants, in the virtual world, he asks Saihara to go with him when she’s standing right next to him. 

Saihara is pathetic, clinging to a person that never existed. Kaede was a concept, not a person—he liked the things she said to him, not the person she was. Maki stares at the stars on a day Momota misses training because he’s afraid of ghosts, and tries to convince herself what’s between them is completely different. 

Being alone with Saihara is weird. She has so little to say to him, and even though he believes in Momota and Momota believes in her, there’s an anxiousness that stops him. For all Saihara’s agreed to throw his lot in behind Momota, he’s still a detective and still a suspicious person at heart and still alone at night with a trained assassin with a short temper and boiling jealousy. 

Maki watches him lamely perform pushups, and absently thinks that is she were to kill someone, she would probably pick Saihara. Really, he’s the obvious choice, but her thoughts grow even more detached as she rationalizes that doing something like that would make Momota sad. 

Maki catches herself and glares at her shoes. Is that her reason for not killing?

It’s not like he’s said anything she couldn’t figure out herself. Her past can’t hurt her here. Anyone who told her that she couldn’t choose is gone. It’s not about who she was but who she wants to become. 

It’s not fate—she isn’t heartless—she doesn’t have to be that person—she can choose—she is human—she can love. 

Maki asks, “Akamatsu… you loved her, didn’t you?”

The question causes Saihara to collapse on his latest pushup. He’s gasping for breath, and stammers, “W-What? Haru—Harukawa-san—what is this about?”

“What do you think it’s about?” she spits back. “You’re a detective—you can figure it out.”

Saihara pushes himself into a sitting position, and seems genuinely angry with her—something Maki never thought he’d be brave enough to do. “Harukawa-san,” he says. “I want to think of you as my friend, but I’d really appreciate if you didn’t just ask me questions like that out of nowhere.”

“So I’m not allowed to talk about Akamatsu, then?” Maki rolls her eyes. “You don’t own her.”

Saihara stares at her for a moment, clearly seeing something Maki had thought she had done a better job hiding. “And you don’t own Momota-kun.”

Maki’s control falters, and she snaps, “The way you cling to Akamatsu and Momota is pathetic—you’re pathetic.”

He doesn’t bite back. He just watches. He says, “Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?”

“Do you want to be killed?” she says.

But Saihara doesn’t cower under her threats anymore. “Harukawa-san, I’m sorry if this is rude, but,” he says, voice steady enough to make Maki see red. “Maybe he means a lot to you, but Momota-kun can be friends with whoever he wants, and he really doesn’t owe you his attention.” Saihara looks at the stars. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.”

Maki scoffs. “So then, detective, tell me what I did want to hear.”

“That I’m sure he thinks about you the same way you do about him,” Saihara answers dully. “I don’t think that’s true, but—”

“Akamatsu didn’t love you either, you know,” she says, and Saihara finally flinches. 

She knows she finally won, when Saihara turns back to the ground, eyes downcast as he chews on his lip, saying, “No, I guess she didn’t…”

Maki hates how hollow her victory feels. She doesn’t know what she won other than Saihara’s misery. She doesn’t know why that’s a loss. 

-

She chose.

She chose something for herself because she chose him, and maybe he didn’t choose her back, but that’s okay. She can love, _she can_. Not everything has to end with death and misery. 

Momota’s stupid and asks dumb questions and makes a fool out of himself on a regular basis and is hiding something more than a fear of ghosts, but every time he sees Maki, he tells her how far she’s come and how he knows she can grow even more because he believes in her. The whys and the hows start to fade away, and Maki decides that this must be her real destiny, even if Momota adds, “And Shuichi, too,” to everything. 

Ouma locks Momota away in the machinery bay.

The second he does, Maki’s planning to kill. 

(Momota says, “You’ve changed so much, Harumaki!”)

The memories of Ouma being the villain they all thought he was swimming through her head only confirms her decision. She lies to Saihara almost too easily about how she won’t do anything rash, and tips the point of her crossbow almost lovingly into the slowest, most torturous poison she can find in his lab.

(Momota says, “You don’t have to be a killer—that’s not you if you don’t want it to be.”)

She wants to save Momota, but she also really, really, _really_ wants Ouma to suffer.

(Momota says, “I believe in you!”)

It’s just in her nature when she goes in for the kill.

-

Momota jumps in front of the second arrow, and Maki’s heart stops. 

Ouma steals the antidote, and Maki sits in her room, tearing at her hair. 

Momota’s belief in her really did kill him. 

There are angry tears running down her face, and she doesn’t bother to wipe them away.

Maki read all those stories wrong—she’s the monster. She was always the monster. 

People never change.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the midst of midterms, but managed to finish this up on a study break. Sadly, I'm not going to be able to update my rewrite this week though, so I hope you enjoy my thoughts on Kaimaki in the meantime!


End file.
